New Hampshire Statesman And State Journal

The poet Cowper was a man of sense—plain practical common sense—which is more than can be said of all men who think they have received a gift from the Muses. He was a man of wit, too, as his face would indicate, and as his metrical story of John Gilpin abundantly proves. He had also, as Hazlitt says, "a pensive and interesting turn of thought; tenderness, occasionally running into the most touching pathos, and a patriotic, or religious zeal, mounting almost into sublimity:" But what we were coming at was, that he constantly read the newspapers—and thus indubitably proved himself to be a man of good sense. He read them because he had the penetration to discover, that however profound a man may be in knowledge, if it does not embrace a knowledge of mankind, he is poorly prepared to enter upon the active scenes of life. The opening passage of Book iv. of The Task is a beautiful description of the arrival of the Post with his charge—letters and papers—
"News from all nations lumbering at his back."

It is easy to imagine the gratification of Cowper, as he heard the horn o'er yonder bridge,' the blast of which gave token of the approach of the mail. He might then have been residing at Dereham, or perhaps at Huntingdon, and if at neither, probably at Berkhampstead—in either case, we will suppose at some considerable distance from London—the great newspaper mart. It was a winter evening. The family had gone, it may be, an entire week without a paper—and he himself had all that time been courting the Muses—(it is not clear that he ever "paid his attentions" elsewhere.) His mind longed for cessation from books. It panted for other aliment. Snow and frost had closed the avenue to out-door enjoyments. The poet was cribbed up, through the inclement weather of many a long winter evening, since he had seen a newspaper, and just as ennui commenced preying upon him the papers are brought in. In an instant the aspect of things is changed. The poet's spirits are cheered at once, and in the fulness of his joy he exclaims with the "folio of four pages" in his hand—
"Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.'"